skills acTion Plan for The food and Beverage secTor - Department of ...

SKILLS WORKING GROUP PRIORITIES
The following sections outline key labour market issues
under each of the three Skills Working Group priorities
- better labour market information, more strategic
investment in training and attractive careers.
1. Better Labour Market Information
The purpose of this priority is to ensure robust data and
information is available to enable sound decision making
about food and beverage skills, training, employment and
productivity issues. This priority includes improving the
information base by:
• Being able to forecast labour demand in sub sectors
within food and beverage.
• Better understanding of the link between productivity
and skills in food and beverage businesses.
• Better understanding of how to increase the adoption
of science and technology in food and beverage
businesses.
• Determining the extent of current skills shortages in
key food and beverage occupations.
Each of these components is explained in detail below.
1.1 FORECASTING FRAMEWORK
Action Points
• The food and beverage forecasting framework will
be implemented and applied to all food and beverage
sub-sectors and maintained on an ongoing basis.
This would involve food and beverage ITOs (as part of
their strategic skills leadership role) assisting in the
implementation of the framework in conjunction with
other relevant organisations.
• STAG will guide consistency of application of this
framework within the food and beverage sector,
improve the framework, and test its robustness
with respective industry organisations and training
organisations.
Background
A forecasting framework for the food and beverage sector
was considered necessary to process relevant and available
labour market information using appropriate modelling of
future labour and skills demand in the sector. A forecasting
framework has been developed by BERL (Business and
Economic Research Ltd) and tested on the dairy and wine
sub-sectors, which included industry consultation. This
framework is designed to be used by industry organisations
to assist in their workforce planning.
The numbers generated for the dairy and wine sub-sectors
are not forecasts, rather they provide an outlook for the
sub-sectors and are the result of specified scenarios
which demonstrate how the framework can function.
The framework is a starting point requiring further work,
industry ownership, data integrity and interpretation of
facts and trends that are identified as a result of ‘running
the numbers’. The interpretation is necessary within a
strategic context that includes the impacts of ‘soft’
influencing factors on the flows of labour.
This framework will enable the food and beverage sector,
education and training organisations, industry associations
and government agencies to make better assessments
about future labour and skill needs in this sector and how
to address them. It may assist in education, training and
recruitment decisions and assist the taskforce in planning
its development agenda. There is a distinct need for
projections of the trends in the demand for labour over the
medium term in relation to future growth or changes in the
food and beverage sector.
The framework needs to be further tested with respect
to the assumptions (labour turnover, productivity, output
growth, extent of part-time work) used and integrity of the
data. It could then be extended to other food and beverage
sub-sectors. It will be critical to improve the information
used in the framework and data updates, including use
of the 2006 Census information on occupations and
qualifications within the food and beverage sector. In
implementing this framework, future population changes
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